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BusinessObjects: General Report

Writing for Version 5

BUCS IT Training

Designing Reports in Business Objects V5

BUCS IT Training

Contents

1 INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3

1.1 PURPOSE OF COURSE .................................................................................................................3 1.2 LEVEL OF EXPERIENCE REQUIRED.............................................................................................3 1.3 TERMINOLOGY ..........................................................................................................................3

1.3.1 Universes ..........................................................................................................................3 1.3.2 Objects..............................................................................................................................4 1.3.3 Classes..............................................................................................................................4

2 STARTING A NEW REPORT .....................................................................................................5

3 CREATING AND EDITING BASIC QUERIES.........................................................................6

3.1 QUERY PANEL ...........................................................................................................................6 3.2 CREATING A QUERY ..................................................................................................................7 3.3 EDITING A QUERY......................................................................................................................8

4 APPLYING CONDITIONS TO QUERIES .................................................................................9

5 DELETING AND EDITING CONDITIONS.............................................................................13

5.1 DELETING A CONDITION..........................................................................................................13 5.2 EDITING A CONDITION.............................................................................................................13

6 APPLYING CONDITIONS BY USING A PROMPT ..............................................................14

7 DIFFERENT TYPES OF OPERATORS USED IN CONDITIONS .......................................15

8 LOGICAL OPERATORS ...........................................................................................................16

8.1 AND.........................................................................................................................................16 8.2 OR ...........................................................................................................................................17

9 USING PREDEFINED CONDITIONS......................................................................................18

10 COMBINING LOGICAL OPERATORS...............................................................................19

11 MODIFYING YOUR REPORT ..............................................................................................23

11.1 CHANGING THE WIDTH OF A COLUMN ....................................................................................23 11.2 MOVING A COLUMN.................................................................................................................24 11.3 THE REPORTING TOOLBAR ......................................................................................................25

11.3.1 Insert Break ....................................................................................................................25 11.3.2 Insert Sum.......................................................................................................................25 11.3.3 Insert Count ....................................................................................................................26 11.3.4 Apply Filter.....................................................................................................................26 11.3.5 Apply Ascending Sort......................................................................................................27


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1 Introduction

1.1 Purpose of Course

This document is provided as part of the 'Designing Reports in Business

Objects Version 5' course. The purpose of this course is to teach users

how to set up and manipulate their own Business Objects reports. The

data used in this course is not specific to any area within the University.

After attending, the user will be able to apply the principals explained in

this course to the data that they work with.

1.2 Level of Experience Required

It is assumed on this course that you have some familiarity with Business

Objects and are able to download and open reports, as well as apply basic

formatting. If you have not done this before, you are strongly advised to

attend an introductory Business Objects course before attending this one.

1.3 Terminology

1.3.1 Universes

Business Objects revolves around the concept of the Universe. A

Universe is a cut-down version of a relational database. In practice, there

are several Universes which have been designed by BUCS/MIS to

provide particular views of the University's administration databases.

Examples are the registrations universe, the financial reporting universe

and the staff universe. Each Universe is constructed with a set of Objects

and Classes of Object.


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1.3.2 Objects

An Object is an item of information which is of interest to a user of the

information. It corresponds to a column in a table in a database, or a

column with a condition on it, for example in the financial reporting

universe, the Research AU object is Account Units where the third digit

is an 'R'. Other examples of objects used in finance are Company,

Activity, Account Code etc. There are three types of object, each of

which can be distinguished by the symbol shown to the left of it. The

different types of object are as follows:

Dimension: A dimension is a key object that you are likely to base

your query on.

Detail: A detail refers to a piece of information you may need to see

in the results of a query, but would not usually use to form the basis

of the query.

Measure: A measure object is numerical data that is based on a

calculation involving other objects.

1.3.3 Classes

Within a Universe, you will find Objects grouped together into Classes.

Classes are defined by the Business Objects Manager to reflect the user's

natural grouping of items of information. Their purpose is to make it

easier for you to locate and select Objects when building a query. They

play no other part in retrieving information, although in complex

universes, such as finance, they are used to ensure that incompatible

objects are not used in the same query.


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2 Starting a new report

1. A new report is created by activating the New Report Wizard. This is

activated automatically when you start Business Objects. If you are

already in Business Objects, it can be activated by clicking File, New. The first dialogue box in the New Report Wizard is shown below.

2. Click Begin 3. The next dialogue asks you how you want to access your data. Leave

Universe selected, then click Next 4. The next dialogue box asks you which universe you wish to access

data from. You will see a list of all the universes that you have

permission to access. Select the universe you wish to access the data

from then click Finish.

Following the above steps will take you into the query panel for the

universe that you selected. From here you can specify what information

you wish to show on your report. This is explained in the following

sections.


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3 Creating and Editing Basic Queries

3.1 Query Panel

A Business Objects query is created in the query panel, which is shown

below.

On the title bar at the top of the query panel window it shows the name of

the universe you have selected. In the window above the 'Island Resorts

Marketing' universe has been selected.

All of the classes within the selected universe are shown in the Classes

and Objects column to the left of the screen. Objects within a certain class

can be revealed by clicking the + button to the left of that class. Objects

within a certain class can be hidden by clicking the - button to the left of

that class. For example in the Island Resorts Marketing universe, the Age

group object can be found within the customer class.


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3.2 Creating a Query

A query is created by dragging the appropriate objects into the Result

Objects box towards the right of the query panel, then clicking the Run button on the bottom right of the query panel. When the query is run, a

table will be produced. The columns shown in the table correspond to the

objects that were placed in the results objects box. The following example

describes how to create a query in the Island Resorts Marketing universe

that shows how many guests there are for each customer.

1. Create a new report in the Island Resorts Marketing universe as

described in section 2

2. Drag the Customer object and the Number of guests object into the

Results Objects box.

Note: Double clicking onto an object also adds that object to the

Results Objects column.

3. Click the Run button.

After a brief wait, the results of your query will appear as shown below.

Note: In Finance universes, you cannot run a query without applying a

condition. The process of applying conditions will be described later.


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3.3 Editing a query

A query can be edited by going back into the query panel. Once in the

query panel, any further objects can be added to the Result Objects box as

before. Objects can be removed from the Result Objects column by

clicking on that object and pressing <Delete> on your keyboard. The

following example describes how to modify the query so that instead of

showing the number of guests for each customer, it shows the number of

guests for each year.

1. Go back into the query panel by clicking the Edit Data Provider button on the standard toolbar

2. Click onto the Customer object in the Result Objects column

3. Press <Delete>

4. Drag the Year object into the result objects box to the left of the Number of Guests object

5. Click the Run button

The results of the query will appear as shown below

Note: As Number of guests is a measure object, the number of guests is

automatically calculated for each different year, just as in section 3.2, the

number of guests was calculated for each different customer.


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4 Applying Conditions to Queries

A condition is used on a query so that it only returns a selection of the

available data, rather than returning all of the data. For example, in the

Island Resorts Marketing universe, you may wish to show all of the

customers whose Country of origin is France.

A condition consists of three parts:

Object: Eg Country of origin

Operand: The object value to be searched for, eg France

Operator: The relationship between the object and operand, eg Equal to

The following example describes how to create a query that uses the

condition suggested above.

1. Create a new query in the appropriate universe which in this case is the Island Resorts Marketing Universe. Once in the query panel, you

must specify the objects you wish to show in your query as in the

previous section. In this case place the Customer and the Country of

origin objects into the Result Objects box

2. Drag the object you wish to place a condition on into the conditions box, which in this case is the Country of origin object. An Operators

column will then appear in place of the Classes and objects column as

shown below


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3. Double click the appropriate operator, which in this case is the Equal to operator. An Operands column will then appear in place of the

Operators column as shown below


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4. In this type of query, the operand can either be typed in or chosen from a list of values.

♦To type in the operand, double click Type a new constant,

type in the appropriate value (in this case France), then press

[Return]

♦To choose the operand from a list of values, double click

onto Show list of values. This will cause the following

dialogue box to appear

Double click onto the appropriate value, in this case France

The condition should now look as shown below


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5. Click the Run button

The report that is created will show customers whose Country of origin is

France, as shown below

Note:

i) In the financial reporting universe, objects within the GL Posting Data

class and the GL Balance details class already have conditions attached

to them, so you should not apply conditions to these objects.

ii) There are many predefined conditions (see section 9) which can be

used rather than setting up a condition from scratch.


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5 Deleting and Editing Conditions

Once a condition has been created, it will sometimes need to be altered or

deleted altogether.

5.1 Deleting a Condition

A condition can be deleted as follows:

1. Click with the right mouse button onto the condition you wish to delete

2. From the drop-down menu click Delete

5.2 Editing a Condition

If only part of a condition needs to be changed, ie the operator or

operand, it is quicker to just change that part of the condition, rather than

deleting the condition altogether and starting again from scratch. A

condition can be partially altered as follows:

1. Click on the part of the condition you wish to change. The classes and objects column will change to an operators or operands column,

depending on which part of the condition you clicked on

2. In this column, double click onto the operator or operand you wish to use. That part of the condition will now have changed


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6 Applying conditions by using a prompt

It is often the case that the value of the operand in a query is regularly

changed. In the previous example, the user may not always wish to see

customers from France, but may wish to see customers with other

counties of origin. Using a prompt in a query allows the user to change

the value of the operand without going into the query panel each time.

The following example describes how to set up a query that prompts the

user for the customer's country of origin.

1. Follow steps 1 to 3 in section 4

2. From the Operands column, double click onto Type a New Prompt

3. Type in what you wish to appear in the prompt, in this case 'Enter customer's Country of origin', then press [Return]. The condition

should look as shown below

4. Click onto the Run button. This will cause the prompt to appear

5. Type the appropriate value into the prompt, or click onto the Values button to choose it from a list of values, then click OK

The report will now show information in the category chosen from the

prompt. If the user wishes to change the operand again, the prompt can be

re-activated by clicking onto the refresh button


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7 Different Types of Operators Used in Conditions

The conditions shown up to this point all use the Equal to operator. There

are several other operators available when specifying a condition, some

of which are explained below:

Greater than allows you to specify that the object

must be greater than a certain value. For example

the condition Revenue Greater than 300000 picks

records for which the revenue is more than

£300,000. A similar principal applies to the

conditions Greater than or equal to, Less than and Less than or equal to.

In list allows you to specify more than one value

for an operand. For example if you wished to see

records involving customers from France, Japan

and UK, you would choose Country of origin as

your object, In list as your operator and Show list of

values as your operand. From the list of values,

France, Japan and UK can be selected by holding

down the [Ctrl] key and clicking each country.

Is null picks out any records that don't have any

value for the object in the condition

Matches pattern allows you to specify wildcards.

Wildcards are special characters that can be used

to specify unknowns in the data. Business objects

uses two wildcards:

_ means any single unknown character

% means any number of unknown characters

For example, the condition Customer Matches

pattern 'M%' picks out any customers whose name

begins with M.


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8 Logical Operators

If you want to set more than one condition in a Query, you will need to

connect them together using the And or the Or Logical Operators

8.1 And

Using the And operator between two conditions specifies that both

conditions must be met. It therefore makes the query more specific and

results in fewer records being picked out.

The following example describes how to set up a query in the Island

Resorts Marketing universe that shows the revenue received from the

customer 'Larson' in each quarter of the year 1995.

1. Create a new query in the Island Resorts Marketing Universe and drag

the objects Customer, Year, Quarter and Revenue into the Result

Objects box

2. Specify the condition Customer Equal to Larson

3. Drag the object Year into the Condition box below the first condition. The And logical operator should appear as shown below

4. Select the appropriate operator and operand to make your second condition Year Equal to FY95

5. Run the query

The report that is created will only show records involving Larson in

1995


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8.2 Or

Using the Or operator between two conditions specifies that only one of

the conditions needs to be met. It therefore makes the query less specific

and results in more records being picked out.

The following example describes how to set up a query that lists the

revenue received from all companies in each quarter of 1995 and the

revenue received from Larson in each quarter of every year. To do this

we must again specify two conditions, but as we wish to widen the

criteria, we must use an Or rather than an And.

1. Set up the same objects and conditions as in section 8.1. The

conditions should look as shown below.

2. We must now specify that we wish to include any records for which

the Customer is 'Larson' Or the year is 1995. Change the And to an

Or by double clicking onto And

3. Run the query. You will now see any records for which the Customer is Larson and also any records for which the financial year is 1995

Note:

i) Double clicking onto an Or will change it back to an And

ii) You can specify more conditions by dragging another object into the

Conditions box below the other conditions


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9 Using Predefined conditions

Conditions can set up by the administrator and made universally available

for users to apply to their Queries.

In the query panel at the bottom of the Classes and Objects column there

are two radio buttons as shown below.

The left hand radio button is the default,

corresponding to the Classes and Objects

column. Clicking into the right hand radio button will cause the left hand

column to show the predefined conditions instead. Like objects,

predefined conditions are grouped into classes. Predefined conditions

within a class can be expanded by clicking onto the + button to the left of

that class. For example, as shown below, within the Resort class in the

Islands Resorts Marketing universe, there are predefined conditions

which would cause the report to only show records for a certain resort.

Predefined conditions are applied by dragging them into the Conditions

column. They can be combined with other conditions using logical

operators as described in Section 8.


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10 Combining Logical Operators

You can specify as many conditions as you need to in a query. Sometimes

all conditions may be combined by the And logical operator. The

multiple condition in the query below specifies that all records shown in

the report must be for the customer 'Baker', the resort 'Bahamas Beach'

and the year 1994.

This query produces the results shown below


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Sometimes it may be necessary to combine And logical operators with

Or logical operators. When this is the case, one has to be careful how the

logical operators are combined. This type of situation occurs in the

following example, which shows how to set up a query that specifies that

all records must be in the fourth quarter of 1993 or in the first quarter of

1994. In logical terms the condition that will produce these results is as

follows:

(Year Equal to FY93 And Quarter Equal to Q4) Or (Year Equal to

FY94 And Quarter Equal to Q1), where information in brackets is

analysed before combining it with any other condition.

1. Create a new query in the Island Resorts Marketing universe and add

the objects you are interested in to the results objects box. In this case

we will use the objects shown below

2. Add the conditions so that the condition box looks as below


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3. Change the second And to an Or, by double clicking onto it. The

condition box will now look as below

The Or, along with the two conditions it is combining, has now

indented to the right with brackets around it. In a Business Objects

query, this means that these conditions will be combined before

combining with any other conditions. In logical terms, this query will

currently be analysed as follows:

Year Equal to FY93 And (Quarter Equal to Q4 Or Year Equal to

FY94) And Quarter Equal to Q1. This will not show the information

we wish to see as the brackets are in a different order to what they

should be. So the positioning of the logical operators needs to be

changed. The position of logical operators can be changed by clicking

the logical operator with the right mouse button and choosing Shift Right or Shift Left from the drop down list

4. Click with the right mouse button onto the Or and select Shift left (This will change the Or back to an And)

5. Click with the right mouse button onto the top And and select Shift right

6. Click with the right mouse button onto the bottom And and select

Shift right


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7. Double click onto the middle And again to change it to an Or. Your

condition box should now look as below

Both sets of conditions joined by the And operator will now be

combined before the sets of conditions are combined with each other,

which is correct for this example

8. Run the Query. Your results will show any records in Quarter 4 of 1993 and Quarter 1 in 1994 as shown below


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11 Modifying your report

Once you have set up and run your report, there are a number of things

that can be modified without going back into the query panel

11.1 Changing the Width of a Column

The width of a column in a report can be changed as follows:

1. Move your mouse pointer upwards into the top cell of the column you

wish to resize until the pointer changes into a downward pointing

arrow as shown below

2. Click once to select the column

3. Move you mouse pointer to the right hand edge of the selected column

until the pointer turns into the horizontal double headed arrow shown

below

4. Drag to the right to increase the width, drag to the left to decrease the width


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11.2 Moving a column

A column in a report can be moved as follows:

1. Select the column you wish to move as in section 11.1

2. Move your mouse pointer into the selected column and drag to the

position you wish to move the column to

3. Release the mouse


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11.3 The Reporting Toolbar

The layout of the report can be changed in certain ways by selecting a

column and activating buttons on the reporting toolbar.

The reporting toolbar can be switched on or off by clicking View, Toolbars, then checking/ unchecking the Report check box.

The buttons you will probably find most useful on the reporting toolbar

are described below.

Note: When using reporting tool buttons, only the data area of a column

should be selected unlike in the last section, where the whole column was

selected. The data area of a column is selected by simply clicking

anywhere within the column except on the top cell.

11.3.1 Insert Break

This button applies a break on the variable currently selected in the

report. A break effectively breaks the report into smaller tables. For

example, on a report that shows the Resort in each record, if you were to

select the Resort column and click on the Insert Break button, the report would break up into smaller tables showing a table for each Resort.

A break can be removed by clicking onto the column which has the break

applied, then clicking on the Insert Break button.

11.3.2 Insert Sum

This button inserts the total value of the variable selected at each break in

the report and at the very end of the report.

Totals can be removed by clicking onto the column which has the total

applied then clicking onto the Insert Sum button


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11.3.3 Insert Count

This button inserts the number of occurrences of the variable selected at

each break in the report and at the very end of the report.

Counts can be removed by clicking onto the column which has the count

applied then clicking onto the Insert Count button

11.3.4 Apply Filter

This button filters any information in the report that you don’t require.

The following example describes how to apply a filter that only shows

records with a certain value in the Resort column.

1. Click on the column you wish to filter, in this case the Resort column

Click the Apply Filter button

The following dialogue box will appear.

The values, which are listed in the dialogue box, correspond to all the

values displayed in the selected column in your report.


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2. Click on the value you wish to include in the report, then click OK.

Note: To select more than one value, hold down the <ctrl> key whilst

clicking on the values you require.

To remove a filter, click on the column which has the filter applied, then

click on the Apply Filter button.

Note: You cannot apply a filter to an object unless that object is part of

the report. This example only applies to reports that include the Resort

object and therefore the Resort column.

11.3.5 Apply Ascending Sort

Click on a column, then on the Apply Ascending Sort icon to sort the report

in ascending order by that column.

Click on the sorted column, then on the Apply Ascending Sort button to

remove the sort.

Note: In Business Objects, a sort remains on a column until it is removed.

If a sort is applied to a second column, priority is given to the first

column that was sorted, and the second column sort will only apply to

records which have the same value for the first column.

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